The invention relates generally to plasma generation, and more specifically a method and system to manipulate the flow of high speed jets to alter the characteristics to achieve, without limitation, high efficiency acoustic noise reduction.
Acoustic noise radiated from an aircraft gas turbine engine becomes the dominant component of noise during periods of aircraft takeoff and landing. Previous investigations of plasma-based flow control and noise reduction have shown some promising results. Such investigations however, have been limited to a small scale laboratory environment and not large, full-scale engine applications, due to the incapability of simultaneous operation of a large number of plasma actuators.
Known plasma flow and noise control systems and methods require prohibitively expensive components to deal with the requisite high power, high voltage and high repetition rates required to implement plasma flow and noise control of high speed jets. Such systems and methods are known to employ high power, high voltage DC power supplies together with high speed, high voltage MOSFET switches (such as a Behlke switch), liquid cooling, and high voltage, high power ceramic resistors, resulting in bulky and very inefficient systems. These known plasma flow and noise control systems typically waste more than 500 W of power in the form of heat while generating about 20 W of useable power.
It would be both advantageous and beneficial to provide a system and method of implementing plasma-based flow control and noise reduction for high speed jets and that is capable of operating at very high speeds and high repetition rates with high efficiency low energy consumption. It would be further advantageous if the system and method could be implemented at a cost that is substantially less than the cost associated with implementing the foregoing known plasma flow and noise control systems and methods. It would be further advantageous if the system and method could be easily configured for use in any flow control area where flow instabilities are involved, i.e. boundary layer control, combustion instabilities, potentially thrust vectoring, and the like.